Historian, Former Ambassador, Human Rights Activist

Apologies, having a bit of bipolar down side trouble, but I think I am coming out of it.

Except in the direst extremity, I have stayed away from the drugs they use since the horrible, deadening experience of lithium for a brief while in my student days. It remains my opinion that the sharpness and creativity is worth the days of lack of will to…anything. I have, however, a rather strange therapy I devised myself. I always have a very strong emotional reaction to music, and there is a danger of it reinforcing mood swings – listening to the Symphony Pathetique when down or Don’t Stop Me Now when up.

I loaded all my 1400 CDs on to a laptop, and I play the tracks completely at random, or ordered by some emotionally irrelevant criterion like track length. I listen constantly. I find it helps – and with this kind of thing, if you think it helps, it helps. It doesn’t need an objective basis.

88 thoughts on “Bipolar Therapy”

Clark. It is always encouraging to see the youth protesting for human rights, in whatever country the protest takes place. I always used to think that real progress comes from youth movements. Sometimes it comes at a cost, as with Tieneman Square and Kent State University demonstrations. There is a saying that if you’re not left wing when you’re young you have no heart, if you’re still left wing when you’re old, you have no brain. Well they can think what they like about me.
Vronsky. Nice sense of humour, but there is not enough oil for NATO to be interested.

Yes Clark, very interesting – and that at least one of the protests was primarily joint Jewish and Arab. Excellent stuff.
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> Concerns over possible rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip led the Home
> Front Command to issue a directive prohibiting demonstrations in Be’er
> Sheva, Ashdod and Ashkelon.
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I do hope any such attacks cease, since Palestinians should be much in favour of any calls for social justice (I tend to suspect the Israeli people are much less in favour of violence than their government, despite the militarised mood of the whole). That all said, it is also possible there is no intelligence warning of a rocket attack, and the govt are just using it as a mechanism to stifle dissent on domestic issues.

I thought the protests in Israel were mainly about the high cost of housing and the rising cost of living. I don’t think the injustice of the Occupation figures at all.
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Turkey have cut all ties with Israel. They were once buying Israeli drones and weapons.
Turkey cuts trade, military ties with Israel
06 September, 2011, 14:52https://rt.com/news/turkey-military-ties-israel-919/

Turkey has recently given 40 Israelis some of their own medicine which anyone going through Ben Gurion airport would have experienced.
.http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/what-goes-around-comes-around/
Dozens of Israelis questioned at length upon landing in Turkey
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Israeli passengers authorities at Istanbul airport humiliated them and made them undress to their underwear; Officials in Ankara say Turkish tourists subjected to same treatment evening before at Israel airport.
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Some 40 Israelis on board a Turkish Airlines flight from Tel Aviv to Istanbul were separated from the rest of the passengers upon arrival in Turkey on Monday and were questioned at length by Turkish police, marking a highly unusual event against the backdrop of a deepening diplomatic crisis between Turkey and Israel.
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Read the rest HERE

Politics is about deception, as well as film and music. We suspend belief/didbelief by the time we engage with what we are being told about current affairs. It’s not good for our psychology to spend too long cogitating about reality/unreality. I do a lot of driving and its effect is the same as the motorbike cure.
Fortunately we have been given many gifts to enable us to cope with deception. Conscience, logic, memory, and guidance from the books of Allah. We may be given information by someone whose conscience we trust but whose motives we do not trust. Or vice versa. I remember wrestling with reality with the tools of Buddhism, that reality is only an illusion, or of Sufism, that The way is neither that nor this. In the entangled knots of confusion the Muslim resorts to the certainty that everything is encompassed in the knowledge and control of Allah. And when we do that our mental search engine starts to look in more creative directions. Truth in , truth out.
We are told by the media that the Arab spring was the spontaneous uprising of oppressed youth. But the Arab media is owned, paid for and controlled by Zionists. The Army, which refused to fire on the protesters in Cairo, is paid for by the US , and it is now in power. Now we are told that Abdul Hakim Belhaj who has been placed in charge of the Libyan army has been subjected to rendition and torture and has long contacts with the CIA and Al Qaida. Both cannot be true. It is impossible that a man who is a genuine Muslim is placed in charge of the West’s latest colonial acquisition, however many ordinary Muslims he may have killed or betrayed to show his credibility to them as a safe pair of hands.
The truth of the matter is that the New World Order has hijacked Islam into its own political vortex, and has been utilising political Islam in Afghanistan and Pakistan because they are prepared to destroy Muslims who do not conform to their totalitarian and militarian style of Islam. The latest tool in the oppression of Islam is not terrorism, but to give power to Islamic tyrants who disobey all of the fundamental laws of Islam to achieve their political aims. They lie, theycheat, they steal, they spy, they torture kill and imprison in total contravention to the human rights and freedoms prescribed by Islam.
Don’t worry, we have seen all this before. This is the big Obama offensive against Africa. The slavery that Africa suffered before was perpetrated by Arabic speaking Jews and their African allies. But it’s by no means certain that history will be repeated. Even if the Zionist New World Order camouflage their colonial malice with Shariah spouting members of AlQaida, the people of Africa will remember how they were tricked before. Lots of jolly good Englishmen still make their fortunes out of Africa.
George Bush promised they would leave Iraq, weasel words when they have left it in the hands of militant Shia, US mercenaries and Mossad false-flag terror. The UK smashed the Islamic Chaliphate by gross deception, broken promises and overwhelming power. What we are seeing today in the Arab Spring is gross deception, broken promises and overwhelming power. It’s just that the egos of the mujahideen leaders that they are superior to the rest of us, blind them to reality. May the people of the Africa and the world reject the deception of these traitors to the Muslim people and their Zionist sponsors.

Mary, it wasn’t just about high costs. “The Haifa protest focused on the issue of discrimination against Arabs. Shahin Nasser, representative of the Wadi Nisnas protest tent in Haifa said: “Today we are changing the rules of the game. No more coexistence based on hummus and fava beans. What is happening here is true coexistence, when Arabs and Jews march together shoulder to shoulder calling for social justice and peace. We’ve had it. Bibi, go home. Steinitz, go and don’t come back, Atias, good-bye and good riddance,” he said, referring to the prime minister, the finance minister and the housing minister, respectively.

The chairman of the University of Haifa’s student union, Yossi Shalom, told the crowd, gathered at the foot of the Bahai Gardens in the city’s German Colony, “There is no more beautiful sight than social solidarity. As a student, this is the most important lesson I have learned in recent months.” At the protest in Afula the numbers reached 12,000; in Rosh Pina, 7,000 and in Kiryat Shemona, 7,000.”

Unless Netanyahu is gone, a cease fire declared and negotiations have begun, the current dangerous course will not change. If Erdogan is visiting Ghaza next week, coninciding with Turkey stressing its case at the ICJ, maybe entering it from the Egyptian crossing, then he will bring new ideas and a fat cheque, no doubt.
Erdogan might replace the lost US aid, removed two weeks ago, because of Palestine’s go ahead with its desire to become a UN state, or even double it.

Who would want to visit a country that makes you strip off before you’re allowed entry?
An elderly relative used to visit Israel on a regular basis, but has given it up now, she used to spend shed loads of money there and I’m glad she’s stopped going.

@anno – your earlier post got stuck in the spam machine. I get the impression you think it is jinxed against you, but afaik it really isn’t – it has a bunch of rules to determine what is spam, and it gets it wrong sometimes. Such is the way with computers!

My sister has been researching historical poverty in the Scottish Borders. She found this little jewel in the minutes of a meeting in Selkirk, 1843: ‘A stranger from England addressed the meeting and suggested that the officers should frequently inspect the Asylum to guard against imposition and ascertain the applicants were really objects of charity’. Plus ca change – yesterday’s undeserving poor, today’s subsidy junkies.
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Clydebuilt is right, Craig. I’ve told you before – come up here where you will be valued.

Just saw the following comic book being discussed on Al Jazeera’s ‘The Stream’. The creater claims it is all based on historical fact; the other interviewee claims it is all historically inaccurate propaganda.

The other interviewee (not the creator) claims that the content implies, essentially, that BDS (Boycotts, Disinvestment, Sanctions) equates to nazism.

That’s good news Craig.
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@Paul listen to Prof Levine refuting the Hasbara rubbish being put out by Stand With Ushttp://stream.aljazeera.com/story/captain-israel
Stand With Us is yet another part of the American lobby for Zionist Israel.
{http://www.standwithus.com/ABOUT/}

Paul, Mary – on reading the Captain Israel thing, I initially thought it was too propagandist to be real, and had been drawn as a complex ironic joke at the expense of the Israelis. Perhaps not, then!
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@Petrus: err, right. Must be my second irony failure of the day! 😉

How come posts disappear without any attribution? The post is there, one refreshes the page the next day, and they’ve vanished!
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[Mod: er, I just click this button here marked “Trash”… Sorry! Not all the moderators attribute. Your response wasn’t there when I deleted the comment you’d responded to; your comment must have crossed with my deletion, and ended up orphaned, so I deleted it. It’s best not to respond to blatant trolling, so we can delete without leaving loose ends.]

Heh, Glenn: I pretty much always attribute, I think it’s good practise. But we have me and “Other Mod”, and a couple of invisible mods too – as per the anonymous addition to your post. I guess it’s not too critical, unless you feel valuable comments are being deleted.

Craig, the one which is signed is the double column one, and that is the one which is translated. The other one has few marks on it. I have sent you an alternative e-mail address. If you could send a scanned copy of the one column one I can send that across for translation.

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